Heidi Jalkh Awarded with Humboldt Price »Research to Innovation« 2022

Cluster member Heidi Jalkh was awarded for her master thesis »Making matter active through form. Fabricating bio-inspired behavior with auxetic structures« with the Humboldt Award 2022 in the category »Research to Innovation«. We congratulate her very warmly! The thesis at the department of Cultural History and Theory and is part of the Master Open Design, the second supervision was done by Lorenzo Guiducci.

The research work shows how the use of geometry and spatial arrangement can be used to provide a conventional elastic material with unconventional behavior and functionality. Thus, through interdisciplinary research, Heidi Jalkh has succeeded in weaving concepts from biology, materials science, and engineering from a designer's perspective to create new »active materials«.

Abstract Thesis

This practice-led research lies at the intersection of design, craft, materials science, and biology. It is informed by the responsive mechanism of plants’ biological actuators. The research focuses on the development of soft actuators based on bio-inspired auxetic cellular structures, which through external stimuli, change their shape and topology. The project development results in the design and manufacture of a material that draws both from plant actuators (specifically the Ice Plant) and from the mechanical behavior of auxetics (the re-entrant honeycomb structure) to achieve a material which exhibits out of the plane behavior in response to an applied force, creating a active and responsive material through morphology.

The research shows how the use of geometry and spatial arrangement can be used to endow a conventional elastic material with unconventional out of the plane behavior and with embedded functionality.

The material designed in this research, has are no discrete parts or mechanisms to achieve movement and transformation; instead, there are active and constrained regions in a flexible sheet that buckles and bends to form three dimensional structures and out of-plane movement when subjected to uniaxial tension.

The three- dimensional morphing behavior immediately prompted some applications in the field of soft robotics, and a potential new strategy for geometrically-based actuating soft grippers.

A simple and accessible way to fabricate complex shape morphing structures with embedded behavior in planar materials has been developed.

Through this interdisciplinary research, it was possible to weave concepts from biology, material science, and engineering from a designer perspective towards creating new "active materials”.

Text: Heidi Jalkh

Open Design Master
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

First Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Martin Iglesias
Second Supervisor: Dr. Lorenzo Guiducci